The home affairs minister, Dr Tonio Borg, thought that by rushing to print a reply to my contribution on the state of the police force he would have sealed the matter and closed the debate. How mistaken he is.
He spoke about a police force going “from strength to strength” and quoted crime statistics as if they are the famous mystery of Fatima. He is on record in stating that there has been a decrease in ordinary crime, particularly petty theft. True. But his selective memory deprives him from mentioning that violent crime has been on the increase since the last couple of years. For instance hold-ups have increased from 50 in 1998 to 59 in 2006, cases of bodily harm have shot up from 549 in 1998 to 1,089 in 2006 while sexual offences have spiraled to 89 cases from 52 in 1998. (These statistics have been reported in Parliament.)
Moreover, overall crime figures are still substantially higher than they were in 1998. By the end of 2006 the crime rate stood at 16,279 – 1,643 cases more than in 1998. And he will not remind you that his administration holds the highest ever record in crime – 18,266 in 2005. He shouldn’t be blowing any trumpets. Instead he should know that 2006 saved him a few more blushes.
While the crime rate was spiraling out of control he used to prefer hiding behind the flimsy excuse that the opposition was making mileage out of a string of thefts of mobile phones. Well, now that theft of mobile phones seems to be on the decrease the minister is very happy as he no longer considers them to be a trivial issue. So much for his credibility. But it should come as no surprise from a minister who guaranteed spring hunting without the blessings of Stavros Dimas and the European Commission.
The incredible thing about the minister’s response on police pay and conditions of work is that he most conveniently makes comparisons with Labour’s performance on the basis of half-baked subjective averages.
He states that since 1998 total government expenditure on police pay has soared from Lm12 to Lm15 million. Of course, with cost of living increases granted across the board over the last eight years that must have been the case. You will have noticed that the minister has not come out with pay figures since 2003 but, in order to bloat the figures even more, has taken 1998 as the benchmark and compared it to Labour’s record based on 22 months.
Indeed he says absolutely nothing about the fact that in order to keep recurrent expenditure at current levels he had to cut his portfolio’s capital expenditure by a staggering Lm 750,000 in 2006, with the police corps deprived of Lm 50,000. And he has kept the capital vote of the police force under raps for 2007 as well. Indeed by the end of this year the police corps will have been deprived of a total of Lm100,000 from its capital vote in two years. It’s called robbing Peter to pay Paul.
But government expenditure on police pay increased because there have also been at least six new recruitments into the police force since 1998, so it was natural for recurrent expenditure to increase because the numbers have quite logically increased. How then will the minister service his new recruits? Who is the minister trying to fool? Was he expecting Labour to make as many recruitments in 22 months?
Dr Borg then moves on to say that I conveniently omitted to mention that the highest number of resignations from the police force was registered during a Labour Administration in 1996-1998. He says that “in fact in 22 months, 134 members of the force resigned, an average of 73 per annum, as opposed to the annual average of 42 for the past eight years.” Dr Borg’s mathematics is not only wrong but outright misleading.
On the one hand he conveniently takes out an average on a determinate amount of resignations in 22 months under the last Labour administration. But when he refers to his government’s record he pulls out an average of 42 resignations over a longer period - 8 years - instead of 22 months without the decency of providing annual figures. Even pupils in primary education know that averages calculated on longer periods produce smaller results. Dr Borg should know that he must compare like with like when taking out averages.
He most curiously omits to mention how many resignations have been handed in during the last 22 months and on a yearly basis since 1998. What is the minister afraid of? He has the statistics available upon demand. Why is he not publishing them? His omission goes to prove that the minister is trying to keep this fact away from public scrutiny. Since he may be thinking that I am not well informed I will give him the figures myself – in 1998 there were 54 resignations against 63 in 2004 and 66 in 2005. (Figures have been reported in Parliament) The numbers have been steadily increasing and Parliament will confirm again that 2006 was even worse.
I challenged the minister to commission an independent audit of the police corps. He has not taken up this challenge yet. If he is so confident that everyone in the police corps is as happy as he seems to be, then he should have no qualms in taking up my challenge and commission the audit. I am sure he will be in for a few surprises.
Dr Gavin Gulia LL.D., M.P.
(Dr Gulia is the opposition’s main spokesman on home affairs)